


falling together

by ninemoons42



Series: to be with me [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode V: Empire Strikes Back
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Ghosts, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, Rogue One - some of them live, Smut and Feels, partly canon-compliant, wartime wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 18:28:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9197885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Cassian spends the sleepless nights fighting the Empire, and the terrible memories of a life lived at war -- and he mourns the loss of the many, many dead.But he can't join them yet. He has a cause to fight for, and a reason to come back alive.





	

Falling out of hyperspace, like getting kicked in the chest by something very much like a bantha in size and about ten times as strong -- and that was nothing compared to the fiery whirl and flash of battle all around, and the sudden eruption of yelling on the comms: 

“Rogue Six’s got multiple tails, someone bail ’em out!”

“Rogue Two, take out those batteries, and do it quick!” 

“Just have to hold on till we can get Gold Squadron clear of this place, can’t have anyone losing their heads, now,” and that was Rogue Leader, that was Luke Skywalker: and everywhere he went, every world he set foot on, he was followed by a chorus of rumors, each more incredible than the last. Cassian had even been there for at least one of those truly strange stories: that he was doing his level best to sire children everywhere, because those children would grow up to become an army of Jedi, or at least of Force-users, who would fight the Empire on behalf of the Rebellion.

That story had made Jyn and Wedge laugh so hard they’d spilled their ales, last time they’d all had a chance to catch up on some unnamed moon-base with a designation that most humanoid beings found difficult to pronounce.

Huge silent blooming fireball of a TIE fighter imploding just off his port side, and Cassian threw his A-wing into a tight corkscrewing roll, trigger fingers twitching on the sticks as he chased down its comrade and blew it to bits, with the shouts of the squadron and the echoes of his own vengeful cries for background noise.

He was hardly the only one who screamed his way through battle. For some of the other beings in the squadron, there was no point in fighting in utter silence: they gave their voices to the fight, and called warnings to their wingmates and death to their opponents. 

He whooped, now, as he saw three X-wings surge forward in a vicious slash of a maneuver that split an entire flight of TIEs right down the middle, and left them blasted into bits besides -- because one of those X-wings bore the markings that denoted Rogue Leader, while the one that immediately flipped around to watch his back --

That one was Rogue Eight.

That one was Jyn.

And Cassian allowed himself a smile that no one else could see, anyway. Who else in the squadron was battered and bruised from being thrown around in her restraints, from trying to reach every possible control panel inside the cockpit, who threw herself around a seat that wasn’t exactly built to her specifications, and still got up and shot her enemies out of the sky? Who else in the squadron would volunteer to be the first to fly into the heat of the battle? 

That was Jyn, through and through -- and while everyone else in the squadron wondered whether she had a death wish, he, Cassian, understood. He knew why she flew and fought the way she did. He knew why she flew as though she were haunted and hunted because the ghosts that were chasing her were the same ghosts that whispered in his ears. 

Perhaps these ghosts could be friendlier than most, if ghosts could ever truly be said to be friends of the living.

And he caught a glimpse of a sharp-edged grin -- one wreathed in the heat of a repeater cannon firing at full blast -- out of the corner of his eye as he yelled for backup and didn’t wait for them to form up on him. There was work that needed to be doing: and the first order of business was to break that convoy of Imperial shuttles. 

“Sorry,” a voice whispered in his ear, now. A real voice. A voice that he was still learning to listen to. 

“For Bodhi,” he whispered back. “These pilots would have killed him, anyway.”

“At least that’s what we say to make ourselves feel better,” Jyn muttered, darkly -- and she was flashing up to fly with him, the two of them pouring turbolaser fire into one reinforced ship after another.

Alarms, alarms, and he threw a glance at his screens and gritted his teeth for just a moment before speaking to the squadron. “Long-range sensors firing up here, we have big company coming in -- better hope it’s ours and not theirs -- ”

“Rogue Leader,” Wedge called.

“Form up,” was Skywalker’s response. “Give each other some distance, just in case it’s Imperials and they come in with all batteries firing.”

A muttered hiss of various curses up and down the comms.

Cassian blew out his breath in a sigh, and took the risk: he took his hand off the sticks and touched the semi-transparent canopy. His fingertips against the leading wing edges of Jyn’s starfighter.

“Stay with me,” she said, impossibly calm and -- he knew this from waking up to her haunted face every night -- impossibly angry.

Or perhaps there was nothing impossible about her anger. It was the thing that kept her going. The thing that kept her fighting.

Hands on the controls once again, and he deliberately placed himself between Rogue Leader and whatever was coming in.

It was his turn on that roster, after all: the secret roster that Wedge had drawn up after months of battle. The Rogues traded off Skywalker-protection duty despite every form of protest and scolding -- and in the end, even Organa had acquiesced to the necessity of it. 

The Rebellion had a singular talent for recovering from setbacks that would have crushed lesser movements -- but if the Rebellion lost Luke Skywalker, it’d be a long time before they could all get back into the fight.

Jyn, Cassian knew, was next on that particular roster, and he was ready to back her up with everything that he had left in him.

*

From battle to an extra three days of watching the Rebel fleet’s back after sightings of Imperial probe droids: and Cassian was heartily sick of the stench of his own skin, of the grease in his hair and the itch of the sweat that had dried on the collar of his flight suit by the time that he was given the coordinates to the base, by the time he was finally cleared to land.

Only -- where was the landing strip? 

He shot a glance at the sensor arrays, and they were helpfully lighting up the blank snowscape of winter with a virtual overlay. He supposed that there was that.

Blasting icy winds as he popped the canopy and half-fell out onto snow-flurried solid ground, and he made himself run, run all the way to the scant shelter of the base -- and then there was nearly nothing left in him to keep moving. Energy, warmth, all fleeing him as his slow and labored breaths coalesced in clouds around his head.

A hard hand landing on his shoulder. The voice of Rogue Leader: “Come on.” 

And, right on the heels of those leaden words, Wedge’s complaint: “I know we need to hide, but -- _here_? Where even are we?”

Cassian made himself follow them to the pilots’ quarters. Made himself mutter apologies to the beings who were rushing about -- were they trying to stay warm? Were they trying to make sure that the Rebellion would keep running smoothly? Where did they get their energy from?

He kept his head down. Kept his feet moving, step after step forward -- until he ran right into someone’s hand.

A familiar face. He wanted to smile, but he was so worn out, and he wanted to say her name.

Instead he stumbled into her arms.

“Not this again,” and yes, that was Jyn, and yes, she was propping him up again -- he was forever being rescued by her -- but she sounded...fond? Maybe she was fond of him. Only the words were shaped like complaints. Her voice was another matter entirely. She was warm and vital and ablaze next to him and she was the fire that was going to keep him alive.

Falling, falling, and Jyn was there with him. He could trust her. He could have this. 

He thought she was saying, “Bantha fodder, you stink -- ”

He dropped straight into blessed silence and sleep, though some distant part of his brain thought that he might still be imperceptibly moving through the deeps of star-laced space.

*

He pried his eyes open, tried to blink the sleep away, and he was alone in a room that wasn’t his. Alone in the semi-shadowed gloom of thin bands of light leaking in around the door -- there was just enough light that he could see that he was on the bed -- and that there was someone sleeping on the floor.

Oh, kriff -- the floor, he thought -- the floor was _cold_ , wasn’t it? As cold as the rest of this base -- this entire planet -- 

Who was on the floor? Why was he sleeping in this being’s bed? He forced himself to get up, forced himself to see. The bundle on the floor looked like a pile of sleeping bags and maybe one or two mismatched oversized coats. Steady breathing. Rustling, like shivers. 

Some part of his cold-fogged mind summoned up the image of Jyn, huddled on the cold floor -- and there was an image just out of the corner of his eye, that he thought looked like a blind and reproachful moue, and he didn’t pause to wake the being on the floor. He just went and picked them up.

“What?” Muzzy. Muffled by skies knew how many layers she was actually wearing. The scowl on Jyn’s woken-before-time face was the most beautiful thing Cassian had ever seen. 

“Sorry I fell asleep on your bed,” he whispered.

“I’m not sorry about that. But -- phew,” she said, and by the poor light he caught her wrinkling her nose. “If you’re awake enough to pick me up, you’re awake enough to take a bath. I don’t care how you do it. But if you’re coming back here you better not be stinking any more.”

He had to laugh. He had to pull her close, despite her squawk of protest -- and anyway she was also wrapping her arms around his waist, and she was also pulling him closer. 

“Glad you’re back,” he thought he heard her whisper into his chest.

“Can we make it so we’re flying patrol together, next time they make us do it?” he asked into the fur-lined collars that she’d pulled up around her ears.

“You’ve got a higher rank than I do,” Jyn said, pertly. “You’d have to go and talk to -- someone. Organa maybe, or Skywalker.”

“I should do that,” he said.

“Not now. First, go away. ’Fresher.”

“All right,” he said, laughing quietly -- and at the door, he turned back to see Jyn curling up into herself, a ball of furs and layers, back asleep before her head even hit her own pillow.

He listened for the sounds of the base as it settled into the late shift. He listened for the forlorn winds that continued to blow against the windows. He listened for the creak and shush of the sonic refresher as it scoured the sweat and the dirt from his skin. 

He was grateful for the extra jackets that someone had left in an ungainly pile on the cot in his own tiny quarters -- but before he could decide whether to sleep by himself or go and wake Jyn up again, there was a quiet beep coming from the comm console on the wall. 

It only took him three steps to cross the room and press the blinking green button. “Andor here.”

“What -- ? Sorry. I must have punched in the wrong code,” and it was the voice of Luke Skywalker, sounding lost and confused. “I was actually trying to wake Wedge up.”

“I’m awake,” Cassian said. “Do you need anything, Rogue Leader?”

“I told you, you don’t have to call me that when we’re on the ground,” was the mild complaint. “Do I always have to insist that you call me by my actual name? I’m _Luke_ , for skies’ sake.”

Cassian couldn’t help but smile -- and again, there was no one to catch him doing so. “Question still stands, Luke.” He thought, quickly, then added, “Where are you exactly?”

“On my way to the mess hall, why?”

“I’m awake enough to have a conversation, I don’t know,” Cassian said, honestly.

“We’ll see about that. And also: don’t you have to get some sleep? I don’t want to get chased around this base by Sergeant Erso, you know.”

Cassian laughed, softly, instead of answering.

What a marvel it was that he had found people who could still make him laugh.

*

“I can’t believe you told Luke about those rumors,” Jyn said the next night. 

He looked up from mending the long tear in his backup flight suit, and met her eyes, and shrugged. “It’s not like there’re a lot of things he and I might have to talk about.”

“I -- don’t know how to talk to him either.” He watched her bite her lip and look away. “You’re going to think I’ve gone completely karking mad.”

“Too late,” he said, as lightly as he could, and knotted off the last few stitches before biting the trailing thread off. 

“I’m serious,” she was insisting, and she dropped her datapad onto the table and drew her knees up. “Serious about the things I’m feeling and seeing and hearing, I mean.”

“You mean the -- the others,” he said, gravely, putting the flight suit away in his footlocker. 

“You told me you saw them too.”

“So they’re real,” Jyn insisted. “And now I’m hearing voices in my head when I look at Skywalker. Well. Just one voice. I hear Chirrut speaking to me.”

He sat down next to her, and the cot creaked under their combined weight, and when she tucked herself into his side he put both of his arms around her. “What is he telling you?”

“That’s the problem: he’s speaking to me in a language that I don’t understand.”

“I just see him, Jyn, he doesn’t talk to me,” he said, and dropped a kiss into her hair.

“I don’t know what he wants.” She sounded -- not fearful, not really. Just lost, just enough to make him wish that there was something he could do to help.

“You don’t think I’m mad.”

“Half the beings here, Jyn, they’re haunted by ghosts,” he said, quietly. “Maybe most of them.”

“Maybe,” she said.

*

The door into his quarters opened, and Jyn came in, and her hair was still dusted with snow.

“Good patrol?” he asked, quietly, as he sat up.

“Just cold,” he heard her whisper. “Skywalker doesn’t think we’re going mad.”

“Oh,” Cassian said. “You were with him?”

“Hobbie begged off. Medics said he was coming down with some kind of chest infection. Last time I saw him he was complaining about having to go into bacta again.” 

He pulled her gloves away, and tried to chafe some warmth into her hands. “What did you tell Skywalker, exactly?”

“How I was hearing the voices of -- my mother, and of Chirrut. How I can sometimes see Bodhi when I’m flying.” He bent his ear to the quiet sound of her voice. “He said he saw others, sometimes, too. Didn’t want to ask for details. He can keep his secrets. He said he’ll keep ours too.”

A thought occurred to him, then. “You did ask them to watch over you. Over us.”

“I did, on Yavin 4. Just wasn’t expecting them to actually do it.”

He carded his fingers through her hair. Melting water trailed off onto his skin. 

“I also know,” he heard her say, after a long pause, “that you’re staying up late at night to watch over me. Me, and anyone else who’s still up.”

“I can’t sleep,” he said.

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

“I have no idea.”

He felt her press a kiss to his shoulder.

“I’m going to see if we can find a bigger bed,” she said, after a while. “I don’t care what Skywalker or Antilles or anyone else thinks. Someone needs to hang on to you, and since I asked you to be with me, that’s my job.”

“Jyn,” he said, quietly. And found his nerve. “I can do a little better than that. The rules for shared quarters -- it’ll be easier if you and I were, were, something like officially linked.”

She pulled away from him at that, though her hands were wrapped tightly around his arms. “You didn’t just ask me to marry you.”

“I haven’t properly asked you yet.” He slid off the bed, and got down on his knees, and before he could look up into her eyes he saw the ghostly images again. All four of them, this time.

He leaned into her space, and whispered, “I can see them now. They’re -- they’re behind you.”

Strangely, she smiled. “Maybe they want to be witnesses.”

“They already are,” and he kissed her, quick and gentle, and then: “You keep asking me to be with you. I would like to ask you the same thing, now. I don’t know how much time I can give you -- ”

“Every day we’re still alive,” she said, fiercely, and he wanted to weep, because for some reason she’d chosen him. “I’m not going to count the days. But you’ll give me yours, and I’ll give you mine.” She smiled. “Ask.”

“Be with me, Jyn.”

He waited, feeling like he would sink into the ice, feeling that he would rise into the snowbound skies.

“I will.”

*

Wedge by his side, and Luke by Jyn’s, and that had to be the Corellian smuggler standing in the corner of the room, since there was no one else on the base who could stomach being glowered at by a towering Wookiee.

Cassian squared his shoulders and looked Leia Organa straight in the eyes, and when she said, “I don’t think there’s any point in asking the two of you if you’re sure about what you’re doing,” it was all he could do not to laugh.

And there were still tears in the princess’s eyes despite her smile -- tears that glittered on her cheeks as she said, gently, to the room at large, “I’ve been asked to marry these two beings according to the rites of Alderaan. According to the rites by which my mother and father bound themselves to each other. Is there anyone who would object to this union?”

He slanted a look at Jyn -- who was staring at the wall, just a little past the spot that Solo and the Wookiee were occupying, and he wanted to reach for her hand.

“Do wait a moment, let me at least pronounce the words first,” Organa said, looking amused for just a moment before the solemn mask fell back into place. “If no one objects: then you must understand what it means to be joined. It means that you will have a responsibility to keep yourselves alive, and a responsibility to keep each other alive as well. You must live for each other, and you must enrich each other’s lives, and you must care for each other.”

“I will,” Cassian said, and he held his breath and waited for Jyn to answer.

“I will.”

“Good. Those are the Alderaanian vows,” Organa said. “And I will add to them, because I am the last member of the Royal House of Alderaan, and I am also one of the leaders of the Rebel Alliance. I will ask you to do everything that is in your power to further the cause of freedom for all in the galaxy.”

This time, Jyn nodded first. “I will.”

“I have, and I will,” Cassian said.

“Then join your hands,” Organa said.

Jyn’s hands were rough and chapped and seamed with calluses and scars, and he thought his own hands would fare no better -- and he wouldn’t have it any other way. 

“Be with me,” was all Jyn said, however.

Cassian looked her full in the eyes. “I will be with you, and you will be with me.”

“No matter what happens,” she said.

He nodded. “No matter what happens.”

“If that’s it -- then I pronounce the two of you bound,” Organa said. 

“Congratulations,” Skywalker murmured.

*

There was no feast. No music or dancing. Just a solemn toast in the ready room that Rogue Squadron had appropriated for itself -- and after, the short walk to the slightly larger room that he would now be sharing with Jyn.

“I never thought I would live long enough for, for this.”

He looked up from making sure that the door was securely locked.

Jyn was sitting at the foot of the bed, and she was holding a hand out to him, but she was looking past the corner of the room.

Instead of taking her hand, he folded her into his arms, letting her back rest against his chest. “I was always ready to -- not come back.”

Her hands tightened painfully around his wrists, and he did the opposite of pulling away.

He whispered the next words into the back of her head: “I can’t do that any more, can I. Now I have to fight to come back. Now I have to fight so I can see you again.”

“And them, too,” he heard her whisper, the words blurred around the edges by a soft sob.

“And them, too.”

She said his name, and turned around in his arms.

“I have nightmares about losing everyone,” she said.

“That’s why I don’t sleep,” he said.

Tears, overflowing onto her cheeks: and he reeled her in. Kissed those salt-stained tracks. 

“Cassian,” she said, again.

He dredged up a smile. “Jyn.”

Did he move forward to kiss her? Did she fall into his kiss? 

Did it matter? All he wanted was to kiss her, over and over again. All he wanted was for her to climb into his lap. 

His name, falling into the spaces in which she gasped for breath. 

He pressed kiss after kiss into the curve of her throat, feeling the frantic beat of her pulse beneath his mouth.

The world outside the walls of their quarters might be lost in the endlessly falling snow -- but here, inside, he could keep her warm, as he pressed her back into the covers and breathed her name, reverent and gentle. He could undo the braid in which she had been wearing her hair, and run his fingers through the silky, fragrant mass. He could run his tongue over the sensitive skin beneath her ear, and taste the way she shivered.

“Cassian.”

When had he closed his eyes? He was so lost in her that opening them again required conscious thought -- and then almost immediately he was glad that he’d done so.  
Her pupils blown wide open. Her mouth slack and swollen from their kisses. Dark red flush, tell-tale, staining her skin.

“Let me?” she asked.

“Anything you want,” he breathed. He promised.

And that was how he found himself on his back. Helpless to do anything as Jyn straddled his hips. “Hands down,” she’d said, and so he couldn’t move. He couldn’t reach up to touch her, to touch the skin that she was revealing to him as she stripped away her jackets and her layers. 

He couldn’t reach up to help her, either, as she pulled his clothes away. 

She moved away from him to shuck her trousers and relieve him of his, but before he could miss her, she was back on top of him, and there was nothing left but the powerful heat of her skin against his. Her hands, holding his arms down. All he could do was gather up fistfuls of the sheet, and hold on, as she traced the scars and the seams of him. 

Now she was freeing one of his hands, and she was turning it this way and that. Her bright eyes locked on the dents and marks, on the lines in his palm. He couldn’t look away, and wanted to: she was unbearably intent on him, and she had looked at him before but not like this. He wanted to pull away, but she held him fast -- all the way until she bent her head, and kissed his hand.

He touched her, hungrily, his fingertips tracing the lines in her face -- but only for a moment.

When she kissed his other hand, he said, “Jyn,” and meant to say, _Why?_

“This is you,” was all she said.

He bolted up from the sheets, then, but not before wrapping his arms around her waist to hold her close. To keep her from falling over -- safe against his body. 

She was wrapping her legs around him, and he could smell the musk of her, the smell of her sweat and of her need, and he could wait -- just a little longer -- 

He looked her in the eyes. Smoothed away the tears that still glittered on her cheeks. Bent to the curve of her breast, warm over her madly beating heart, and whispered: _Mi amor._

“Cassian,” she said.

“Yes,” and he had to make sure, he had to make her feel good.

He was aching for her, but first -- 

She cried out when he pushed one finger, and then another, into the silky molten core of her. In, and out, now speeding up and now slowing down, until all his world was narrowed to the roll and thrust of her hips and the broken syllables of his name, the broken rasp of her voice.

She went utterly still, suddenly, wracked by violent shivers, and he smiled, and pressed a kiss to her shoulder, the nearest part of her that he could reach.

A moment to let her catch her breath -- a moment in which her hand snaked down into the scant spaces between him and her. 

He hissed, and couldn’t stop himself from bucking up into her touch -- and then she was rising up partway onto her knees, she was guiding him into her -- or he was pushing up into her. Inch by inch, slowly, until he was fully within her, until he was breathless with the sweet press of her all around him.

He grasped her hips. Said, through gritted teeth, “Jyn, please.”

And Jyn moved: rising and falling, burning him up. Her hands, hot where she was bracing herself on his shoulders. He had no idea where he ended and she began -- he could only feel the way she was riding him, deliberate and sweetly torturous. He could only fight for the next breath, and the next, and the next -- he was spinning out of control, lost in the sensations of her.

Blindly he brushed kisses against her mouth, and blindly he thrust up into her again and again -- she was pushing him inexorably to the edge, he couldn’t stop himself, she was too much, she was perfect -- 

He wanted to last, he wanted to make this so good for her -- 

Bright blasting silent shock of orgasm.

Somewhere, someone was shouting, and it sounded like his name.

*

Jyn was murmuring, beside him, when he could hear again.

He reached out to her first.

When she curled trustingly into him, he felt like he’d been given a precious gift.

“They’re -- they’re not here,” she said, after a moment. “We’re alone for now.”

He smoothed his fingertips over the curve of her hip. “So who were you talking to, just now?”

“I was practicing.”

He blinked, and met her eyes.

Her smile, when it appeared, was shy, and that was something he’d never seen in her before.

“Jyn,” he said, hoping to encourage her.

Fits and starts in her words, when they came. “I -- I’d never said it to anyone else. Just to -- my mother and father. Never found anyone else I could say it to, and mean it. Because I figured out what you were saying to me, while we were -- we were. You called me your love. Yes?” 

“Jyn,” he said, again, astounded.

“Let me say it,” she said. “Please.”

He nodded, mutely.

“I love you.”

He choked back the tears, and took her hands in his, and he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “ _Te amo._ That’s how it’s said, in the main language of my homeworld.”

“ _Te amo,_ ” Jyn said. And: “It sounds so beautiful.”

“So are you,” he said.

Strangely, she laughed softly at that. “Tell me that again when we’ve just come fresh from the fight.”

“You know I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on tumblr [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
